


The Cherrybomb

by Ampersand_Martin



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Dancing, F/F, F/M, Fuck Hiram Lodge, Gen, M/M, Moonshine, Murder, Speakeasies, Wedding, mafia, moonshining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26504578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ampersand_Martin/pseuds/Ampersand_Martin
Summary: “Now, most people question why Archie’s even on Cheryl’s payroll, he seems too nice, too exposed. That is, until they see him in a suit, all sharp lines and a pistol at his waist. There’s rumors he’s the one responsible for big scar down Hiram Lodge’s cheek that most people write off.”AKA a 1920s speakeasies and moonshining AU mostly made up of vignettes
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II, Archie Andrews & Cheryl Blossom, Archie Andrews & Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz, Fangs Fogarty/Sweet Pea, Kevin Keller/Moose Mason
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	The Cherrybomb

Archie is a dock hand/ship repairer. He slowly rose through the ranks making all the right friends. He plays a bumbling idiot, too trusting of everyone. He dodges tax audits with a smile and a batch of homemade cookies “from the wife”.  
In all honesty, he’s the kingpin of the city’s greatest speakeasies right hand man. He oversees every one of Cheryl’s shipments in and out of the harbor and makes sure she gets her money’s worth. He’s too high up at this point to really do much bruising, but he’s willing to do it when the occasion calls for it, usually only when Cheryl specifically asks for him.  
He are Cheryl are close-knit. He’s saved her life one than once by now, and she’s made sure he survived the Andrews family’s fall from grace.  
Archie rarely mentions how he got into the business, just that he did. Few people remember him as the sweet young boy being prepped to take over both the Andrews’ small pile of wealth and a section of the Lodge Family business.  
No one remembers that is was the Lodges that are responsible for Fredrick Andrews (“call me Fred!”) untimely death. The Lodges claim that Fred was a family friend and he left them his holding to look after until Archie came of age, but Archie’s 18th birthday was spent running from a hit man, not negotiating back his family wealth.  
Now, most people question why he’s even on Cheryl’s payroll, he seems too nice, too exposed. That is, until they see him in a suit, all sharp lines and a pistol at his waist. There’s rumors he’s the one responsible for big scar down Hiram Lodge’s cheek that most people write off.  
Most people see his and Veronica’s relationship and assume it’s more than the close-knit friendship they’ve formed. The disgraced daughter of a tycoon (now little more than a busker in the public eye) certainly doesn’t shy away from flirting, but the smiles she gives him are that gratitude.  
-  
Veronica Lodge ran from home at age 16. She started scraping her way through clubs singing for pennies and a hot meal, knowing she could never return to her father’s sprawling estate.  
Cheryl Blossom heard her sing once and immediately hired her at her biggest speakeasy. Now Veronica’s paid both a healthy wage and given all the moonshine she could ask for. She’s got her own little empire now, hidden from public view under a stage name and a blonde wig.  
She hides her relationship with the bartender, Betty, with sweet looks at Archie Andrews. (Who hides his relationship with Jughead Jones with sweet looks at Cheryl Blossom).  
She knows that when the time comes, she’ll dismantle the Lodge Empire and hand it over to Cheryl, keeping enough to keep herself happy. Until then, she’s perfectly content to sing under the moon’s light and sneak kisses with Betty before each show.  
If her eyes drift to the back corner during love songs, well that’s only because the stage lights are running extra hot tonight.  
-  
Years ago, Archie went with Veronica to get her stuff back from Hiram and that’s when Archie gave him the scar. Archie would have wasted Hiram on the spot, but he wants to save the kill for Veronica unless she gives him explicit permission to do it.  
Hiram’s fucked a lot of people over, but if you work for Cheryl Blossom, you know Hiram Lodge belongs to Archie Andrews and Vee Luna (Veronica’s favorite stage name).  
He belonged to Veronica from the moment she ran away, after he tried to arrange her marriage to a much older man.  
He belonged to Archie the moment Fred Andrews died. Hiram spent years grooming Archie to take over some of his business but when the “Andrews fell into hard times”, Hiram ordered a hit on Archie because he knew too much about the Lodge family secrets. Archie took out three hitmen in the two year span between the Andrews family’s fall and Archie giving Hiram the scar.  
-  
Elizabeth Cooper grew up in the city as an aristocrat, but her story starts much earlier, when the Cooper name, much like the Lodge’s, was a proud name.  
Alice Cooper came from nothing, and the press made sure the world knew it. She was called a temptress, a gold digger, after nothing more than the Cooper wealth.  
The press wasn’t entirely wrong either. Alice never loved Hal, as much as she tried to convince the press otherwise. She married him at the behest of her father, tearing her away from Forsyth Pendleton Jones II, her true love. FP said he understood, he was a nobody as well, had nothing to give her but a happy life full of debt. Well, two more things, but we’ll get to those.  
So she left her tiny brownstone and moved uptown to the sprawling Cooper estate. The problem she encountered first, was FP’s first ‘gift’ to her. She was pregnant by a man who was not her fiancé. Hal loved her already so she spun them through the song and dance of engagement as quickly as possible.  
They were married in the spring and had their first child in the late summer. Anyone who noticed the discrepancy was polite (afraid) enough not to mention it. The Coopers were once very powerful, you know.  
The child, the press reported, didn’t survive the winter. It seemed strange, the baby was plump enough when it was born, and it’s skin held a glow even brighter than either of its parents, it’s dark hair (“from a cousin, I suppose”) was glossy, but not every baby makes it.  
(In the truth, FPs second gift was a phone number and a address, and people don’t go looking for dead aristocratic babies in the city’s slums)  
Regardless, after that, Alice struggled to conceive. The press called her cursed. Two winters later, they started going through old notes. They said her previous baby wasn’t truly Hal’s and now God had seen fit to blight her. The city gets rather boring in the winter and the press needed a new big story.  
Over time, Hal began to believe the stories. Even after they had two (blonde haired and fair skinned) daughters, the press still saw fit to make Alice their favorite villain and the Hal their favorite victim.  
Their marriage deteriorated. Their eldest daughter committed suicide. It deteriorated some more. They lost a great deal of money in the stock market. It deteriorated more. Hal began hitting Alice.  
The marriage ended.  
According to official sources, heartbroken from his daughters passing and the great loss of money, Hal Cooper committed suicide 8 days before Christmas.  
According to less reputable sources, Hal Cooper was pushed out the window.  
Alice Cooper was questioned relentlessly until she too, jumped from the third story window of the Cooper Manor, like her daughter and husband before her. The third time something like that happens it’s rather blasé and barely got press attention.  
Many people think the Cooper story stops here. It technically does, in a way, but someone has to inherit the money and no other city family became richer at Alice’s passing.  
Elizabeth Cooper was able to slip away, the last Cooper in a web of tragedy. Elizabeth Cooper became Betty Anne Booker. Her long shining blonde hair cut short and stuffed up under page boy caps. She got a job working with a bartender, and excelled. Her dainty mannerisms traded for the ability to snap twice and kick anyone out of her bar.  
Technically, she was still rich, but money didn’t always mean connections, so she decided to forge her own. She called up Old Friend Jughead Jones, someone her mother had let her meet once or twice so long as she didn’t tell her father. She had a crush on him in her youth, before her hands had strange callouses from twirling shakers. Seeing him now, she sees too much of herself. Regardless, He connected her into his Moonshine train and introduced her to Archie Andrews. She enamored herself to him, then to his boss, and then she had a job in nicest speakeasy in the city. Cheryl winked when she mentioned how pretty the lead singer was.  
(“Her voice is beautiful”  
“Hmm, indeed. I hire people who are very good at their jobs.”  
“You sound like a business man”  
“As do you. The press says your father fell for a songstress, tell me, ‘Betty’, will you suffer a similar fate?”)  
And so she was hired. She attended to the bar and to Vee Luna, the voice that ran the speakeasy.  
Their first anniversary gifts to each other would be their old names embroidered in gold and a bottle of Jughead’s finest rum.  
-  
Forsyth Pendleton Jones III grew up outside the city, a nobody. The confusing process that led him to be dining with the cities cast-offs, those that once hailed from greatness and now are barely remembered, stumps even him when he tries to tell it.  
It started with the Cooper/Jones affair, before he was even born. His father and Betty’s mother had an illegitimate child who’s death was faked. His father knew that it was only a matter of time before someone came looking for Charles Smith (Alice had been nice enough to ensure he could neither be tied back to herself or FP if it came down to it, and so his name was changed).  
FP took Charles out the to country side and found a job with a woman by the name Gladys, whose farm covered up her moonshine ring. FP settled down with her and they eventually had two kids.  
Charles left for England when Jughead was barely ten. FP knew it was for the best. Charles couldn’t return to the city and the farm and moonshine lives had never sat right with him.  
Speaking of, FP quickly became the leader of the moonshine ring (called the Serpents, for the way their paths in and out of the city zagged every which way to confuse police) and brought them into prosperity. He even personally ran rum to the Lodge family, that is, until they double-crossed him and almost cost him everything.  
After that, FP stayed mostly behind the scenes, and Jughead took over running at only 17. He was the best, and 8 years from now he would be in charge of the supply for all of Cheryl Blossom’s speakeasies, but there is still a few more twists in this story.  
When he turned 18, he was caught. Hiram Lodge’s last act of a revenge against FP Jones. Feeling emasculated from his newly formed scar, Hiram struck and the police descended upon Jughead.  
But only Jughead. He kept the rest of the operation perfectly secret. He promised the police total reform and became a mob buster within the department.  
He would have been great at it, he had all the right connections, an easy nature for disguise, but instead he double crossed his double cross. He played up his age, claiming to only run small batches. ‘The one they caught him with had been his first big run and that’s why they caught him.’ ‘He didn’t want this life is forced upon him.’  
The police believed him. And Jughead knew he couldn’t go after the Lodges just yet, so he started after the Blossom family. He had heard through the grapevine what they did, and as illegal as Jughead’s preferred profession was, he wasn’t hurting innocents in the street.  
He took them down carefully, until he met Cheryl Blossom and made sure the chips fell that she got all the money and none of the blame.  
From then on, he worked with Cheryl, taking down families of her choice, gathering intel on the Lodges. When the time came, Cheryl helped him fake his death.  
Forsyth Pendleton Jones III was dead. The best mob buster the police ever had finally gone in too deep.  
In his place Jughead sprung up. An old childhood nickname from a time he got one of the moonshine jugs stuck on his head. FP has taken to making sure he was always wearing a hat after that, so that his head wouldn’t fit in another.  
He began running again, finding that the Serpents had only grown more under his sister’s watchful eye. He still worked for Cheryl, keeping her well-stocked. He flirted with his drop-point coordinator, a charming redhead Cheryl seemed to trust even more than him.  
(Eventually he would set up his right hand woman, Toni Topaz, with Cheryl and would attend the small wedding in the speakeasy as Toni’s right hand man).  
And when, 8 years later, he looked around the table and saw three high born criminals, each wronged by the Lodge family, he would realize he was right at home.  
-  
Cheryl Blossom is 10 years old when she sees someone die for the first time. He’s a friend of the family, someone she begrudgingly called ‘uncle’ because it made her parents happy. She hears the muffled gunshot from the next room and peeks through a key hole to watch as he starts to bleed out. She hums to herself and creeps back into her room, knowing exactly how much to leave the door cracked so that she can hear what’s happening in the hallway, but so much that it’s obvious she’s eavesdropping.  
Money, she swiftly realizes, is a matter of life and death.  
The next ten years are a blur of funerals, death threats, and great deal more of money. She can have everything she wants, except more time with her brother.  
Jason Blossom is favored child. Less dramatic, more pragmatic. That becomes the mantra of her childhood. When she wants nothing more than to confide that she doesn’t want a life trailed with the deaths of innocent people, she’s forced to take a bigger role in the family business.  
She realizes her love for dramatics and acting do have a place in all of this after all, and she adopts her favored role “stone cold bitch”.  
The life of a mafiosos child is hard. Jason gets by with his senator smile and easygoing attitude. Cheryl gets by with dark painted lips and words that cut in all the right places.  
Her father handles money with a ruthless attitude and her mother orders hits when she gets bored. They are a powder keg of a family.  
The keg explodes on Cheryl and Jason’s 20th birthday. Her kind, sweet brother is gunned down in the street as they come back from a play.  
Her father shrugs and says “these things happen Cheryl, the family business is ruthless”. Her mother pats her arm and says “Goodness Cheryl, you act as though this isn’t a chance for you to inherit more”. In bedroom, quietly to herself, Cheryl says “This means war”.  
She pushes into the mafia part of the family harder. She gathers more intel, she starts forging documents, she uses every ounce of her acting abilities to pretend as though her heart hadn’t been crushed when a bullet entered Jason’s.  
She finds Forsyth Pendleton Jones snooping in her garden and she almost kills him on the spot. Instead, she starts planning with him. The Blossom Family will pay for what happened to Jason.  
Forsyth (“call me Jughead, only my enemies call me Forsyth”) is the one who finds out the hit on Jason was ordered by her mother. She almost throws away the whole plan to strangle her mother right then and there, but Jughead holds her back. It was a team of six, including her mother, that orchestrated Jason’s death they find.  
After Jughead helps her topple the Blossom fortune into her lap, she starts hunting down the men who killed her brother. Her mother dies first, of course, by Cheryl’s own hands on the way back from a court hearing. Jail would be too kind.  
She burns down the Blossom Estate to collect the insurance money the same night she meets Archie Andrews.  
She vaguely remembers him from her childhood. Someone who had a future, and then didn’t. A redhead too. It makes her heart crush all over again, until he smiles at her, soot dusting her silk gloves. He doesn’t smile like Jason did, he smiles like she does and so she offers him a job.  
Archie Andrews kills five men in revenge for Jason Blossom. This would be enough to make Cheryl like him normally, but he goes the extra mile. He takes her back to his apartment and offers her a change of clothes before burning the soot covered ones to get rid of the evidence. She lives with him until she buys her own place, still close to his apartment. When he laments about missing gin the wheels start turning in her brain.  
Over the next few years, she’ll open a few speakeasies, hidden in basements and on boats. Archie Andrews will save her life two more times. They will become fast friends, and she will hire him to work for her crowning jewel: The Cherrybomb.  
She will make sure Vee Luna is hired there and that she and Betty Anne Booker end up together. She can’t technically claim that she set up Jughead and Archie, but she does employ both of them and she oversees the moonshine pick up spots, so in a weird way she did. She will hire countless more people to fill roles in her domain, mostly those who have been ruined by the city or by the Blossom Family.  
Jughead will set her up with Toni and when they get married, a secret, like most things in her life, she will cry the hardest she has since Jason died.  
Cheryl Blossom is rich, she’s mean, she’s tainting innocents, she’s providing libations, but at the end of the day she knows it’s not true unless the papers say it is and she’s very, very good at staying out of the papers.  
-  
Cheryl Blossom and Archie Andrews are equal levels of threatening but people doubt Archie because he’s nice and Cheryl because she’s a woman which is part of the reason they’re both such good friends. In certain circles them walking into a room together is in itself a threat  
-  
Jughead does eventually tell Betty everything he remembers about Charles. Last he heard he was working for the police in London, using his Americanness to go under cover. Betty doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved when she hears his last name is Smith. Truly, there are no Coopers left.  
-  
Cheryl’s only dealing in violence (besides the roughing people up associated with running several high class speakeasies) left is Reggie’s Fight Club. Reggie runs an honorable (or as honorable as it can get) establishment and he’s quite proud of it. The fights run smoothly, no one dies, and he gets a good deal of money.  
Archie and Cheryl attend infrequently, but when they do it is always together. Archie wears something too classy and Cheryl wears something flashy and bold, hidden under a big fur coat until they arrive in the hot arena, where she tosses it aside to show off her extensive collection of red jewels.  
Archie likes to explain how the moves can be used on the street, when the goal is to kill or seriously injure rather than entertain and Cheryl thinks it’s interesting. He whispers it low, so only Cheryl can hear. They have a reputation to maintain after all.  
After the fights they get lavish dinners, things even they balk at the price of. They drink water during the meal, having already had plenty of alcohol for the night. Thankfully, most people assume Cheryl’s flush is from the cold weather, not the flask hidden in Archies suit jacket.  
-  
Mad Dog Munroe was Reggie’s best fighter until he took a serious blow to the head and decided to retire. Archie convinced Cheryl to pay for dentistry work to fix his teeth and then Archie set him up in the same apartment block he lives in.  
They spar every now and then, but mostly they hit the town together. They go to Cheryl’s speakeasies on Archie’s nights off and Munroe gets a job at a library. His younger brother starts running Moonshine with Jughead, mostly small Inter-city jobs. Jellybean is meticulous about who comes out to the country side to make sure no patterns can be established.  
-  
Jughead likes running moonshine, he finds. It seemed like an eventuality when he was younger, but after his time away he was longing to come back. Jellybean boxes his ears and says something about ‘absence makes the heart grow stupider’ but welcomes him back all the same.  
He walks tall through the streets, carrying a cane that’s only half for show (constant close calls with the cops have seen to that), daring someone to look in his eyes. He whistles as he passes the precinct and waves at an officer leaving for lunch. If someone were to claim that he’s semi-famous mob-buster Forsyth Pendleton Jones he would simply smile and say “If only! I’m just a humble author, I could never do something as great as take down crime families. Though if you swing by the library on third ask for Munroe and tell him Jughead sent you, I have a rather lovely book published on moonshining if I do say so myself”  
-  
Kevin Keller wears a lot of hats. Literally of course, this is the 20s and he’s fashionable, but metaphorically as well. He spends his days punching numbers in the bank, watching stocks grow and crash, and seeing people flaunt wealth and hide debt.  
Kevin is dressed modestly. A mid-line suit that has been altered to fit him perfectly. The thin stripes are fashionable, even if his father says he looks like a mafioso.  
Tonight, he will head to Harlem, to one of the many balls and he will dance. His plain brown suit will be traded for a dress he stole from Betty the last time he visited her. His plain brown cap will be traded for a black wig. His plain attitude and bankers smile will be traded for genuine fun.  
Tomorrow, he will put on a different hat. His dress and wig swapped out for an expensive black suit tailor made just for him. He will use his nice briefcase to house the documents Cheryl needs to start forging, another step in taking down Hiram Lodge. He will hand over the papers and then put his briefcase and jacket in storage.  
That night he will wear a different hat. He will slink over to the bar, order something from Betty with a smile and then bother her until Vee’s set ends. When the two of them head to the coat room, he will make his way to the dance floor. It’s here, in The Cherrybomb he feels the most free. The bank job is a boring scam he’s paid handsomely for, the Harlem Balls are fun but ultimately exhausting, and sitting in front of Cheryl he feels so scrutinized it’s like she can see into his soul. In the dark, breezy and boozy, the speakeasy lets him relax.  
When Reggie approaches him to dance he immediately says yes. The two met in Reggie’s fighting club when he picked up winnings for Cheryl and they had had an easy friendship since. They laugh and discuss life on the edge of legality and drink the cheapest stuff at the bar.  
When he returns home, it will be to Moose. His final hat, loving husband. Moose is aware of the crime in the loosest terms. He knows his husband brings home extra money as a way to help out, and that that money comes from semi-legal means. It’s better if Moose knows less, just in case.  
Kevin Keller wears more hats than most men own, and that’s saying something.  
-  
Kevin has an elaborate contingency plan if he gets made that Moose will get a stipend from Cheryl. It’s his one demand about working for her.  
-  
Moose actually works at the same docks Archie does so Archie knows about Moose but Moose doesn’t really know about Archie. Moose does know that Archie and Jughead are an item but has never made the connection that they both work for Cheryl. Conversely Moose is the only person who has put together that Jughead is Forsyth Pendleton and he warned Kevin about him so Kevin had to give away that Jughead was always working for a speakeasy, but he didn’t mention Cheryl. Moose is in kind of a weird spot in terms of what he knows.  
-  
Josie and the Pussycats are famous and completely separate from the crime life besides the speakeasies that they play in. They travel often, but any time they are in the city Cheryl pays them double to make their way through all of her speakeasies, and play at least twice at the Cherrybomb.  
-  
The Serpents of the city start their process on a farm upstate. Hidden in the woods just outside of the Jonesboro Farm there is a distillery. Gladys Jones established it, then passed it along to her husband FP after he came out to the countryside. He took over main operations and took a few bootleggers and farmers and turned them into the Serpents.  
When Gladys Jones eventually ran to Canada, leaving behind her husband and two kids, FP doubled down. Armed with a few good friends, all the right connections, and his 16, 8, and 5 year olds, he began his biggest business venture yet.  
Eventually, Charles would leave. FP would miss him as both his son and his last remaining connection to Alice Cooper. A lesser man would be driven to drink, but FP, as much has he hated Prohibition, was never a fan of alcohol himself. Instead, he made an empire.  
When Hiram tried to pin him, Jughead became his main runner. When Jughead was made, FP passed the empire along to Jellybean. At only 16, she wasn’t anyone’s first pick, but FP saw the spark in her. Bootlegging needed to be erratic and whose more erratic than a teenager girl.  
(In the back of his mind, FP knew the nicknames were a bit ridiculous, but one could never be too careful in this line of work. And so, everyone got a nickname.  
The nicknames were never too creative, most pedestrian things to call each other.)  
Jughead’s was easy, and while it made sense for him to hide it when he worked for the police, FP was relived that Forsyth Pendleton was dead. Jughead was Jughead.  
Jellybean got her nickname young. She was obsessed with the candy, and she’d do practically anything for a bag of Jellybeans. When she was older started going by the more threatening JB Jones, FP would always be secretly relived she still let him call her Jellybean.  
Sweet Pea was next. The kid was always built, and he was an incredible driver. His nickname seemed to come from no where, one day he woke up and everyone seemed to be calling him Sweet Pea. FP knows Fangs was the one who started it, but Sweet Pea seemed to like the weird dichotomy so it stuck.  
Sweet Pea was often the one making the longest trek from the country into the city, his big truck full of clanking bottles. His tough glare scared off passerby’s and for the ones that still tried to get on his bad side, Fangs stepped in.  
Fangs got his nickname the fateful day that Sweet Pea found a snake by one of the tanks. Fangs proudly proclaimed it was harmless, grabbed it, and then got bit by it. The snake didn’t have actual fangs and it didn’t draw blood, but the nickname stuck anyway.  
Fangs was a master at forgery. FP had found him sulking through the countryside paying with counterfeit bills and had recruited him immediately. He forged Doctor prescriptions for the liquor and enough money for anyone who wanted to question his prescriptions.  
Peaches was the last to join the motley crew. She showed up one day on the farm, younger sister in tow. She had a southern drawl and nails filed down to points and when FP asked if she needed work and a place she had nodded once, firmly. They shook hands and while they were close she whispered “anything happens to my sister you’ll find out what happens when a peach turns rotten”. FP had dubbed her Peaches with a wink and showed her to a room in the hayloft.  
Peaches was muscle usually, but she was also an incredible spy. She guarded the farm most of the time, but Jughead would call her into the city sometimes when they needed a specialist. In those cases she’d ride along with Sweet Pea and Fangs as they headed into the city, discussing the merit of using peaches, rather than apricots, in the making of moonshine.  
-  
Sweet Pea grew up on the farm. His dad was an original Serpent back when Gladys still did most of the running, and Sweet Pea spent more of his childhood in the barn than in one of the houses.  
Most his time was spent around the horses. He learned how to put up their tack, how to groom them, and how to ride. He had been entering rodeos since he was little. As much as he loved the rush Bootlegging gave him (and the money) his heart resided in the barn, with the horses.  
Trick riding came naturally to him, as did driving. The Ford Truck FP brought back from the city was technically free for everyone to use, but you’d be hard pressed not find someone who called it Sweet Pea’s truck.  
Fangs was not vehiclularly inclined. The first three times he tried riding a horse he was kicked off every time, and he was only given one chance to drive Sweet Pea’s truck before they all decided never again.  
In fact, Fangs had been permanently marked for passenger status. He didn’t mind it really, so long as the driver was Sweet Pea.  
Peaches and Jellybean both drove like maniacs and FP was so cautious it was infuriating.  
The only upside to being the worst driver in the state was that sharing a cab with Sweet Pea was worth every second.  
(Sitting in the bed of the truck, smiling at the stars together, was worth every second too).  
-  
Jellybean inherited an empire at age 16 and her only hope was she didn’t drive it into the ground. She ran it with supervision until she was 18, and then it was hers. The Jonesboro Farm and to an extent, The Serpents were hers. Her no-good brother faked his death and started working for them again around when she turned 19.  
When Jughead returned to the farm it was with big ideas and a redhead on each arm, talking a big game about how he had lined up a big contract for them.  
Jughead and the redhead she came to learn was Archie, headed off to the barn to say hi to Sweet Pea and Fangs, leaving Jellybean with Cheryl Blossom.  
Jellybean had heard the name Cheryl Blossom before, back when she tracked everything Jughead was doing to make sure he was okay.  
Nothing prepared her for the woman in front of her.  
Cheryl Blossom was all smiles until she wasn’t and she flirted her way through business deals. Jellybean had been around long enough to see through the bullshit, but there were times she almost fell for it.  
As they began working out a contract, Jellybean found she rather liked playing mind games with the Cherry bomb herself.  
-  
Toni Topaz was born on Jonesboro Farm two years before Jughead Jones. She left two years before him too.  
Toni Topaz grew up running around a farm, mending fences, carrying jugs of water and moonshine to and fro. So when she turns 17 in the city, she enters her first dance-a-thon with the stamina of a farm girl. She learned to Charleston in a barn and Tangoed in fields next to goats, but amidst all the bodies you can’t tell. Her partner drops hour five and she vows to never dance with him again.  
She begins dancing all the time, in the clubs, in her apartment, in the streets, and she enters more dance-a-thons than she can count. The money from the clubs let’s her scrape by, but winning dance-a-thons pays for new dresses.  
She chooses each one of her potential partners carefully, forcing them to dance with her for hours before she says yes or no. She gets famous on the scene and more and more people offer to dance with her. More and more people are told no.  
When Jughead returns to moonshining she’s been dancing for 5 years and she feels like she’s on top of the world. He dances with her once, at a low stakes competition before he says his bum knee won’t let him do these kinds of things anymore. She doesn’t mind, but she does start inviting him to clubs so they can dance with less pressure to win. They dance just to feel the music and she lets Jug dip out whenever his knee twinges (he was a great dancer once. He could almost rival her in terms of stamina too. She hates the cops for a lot of reasons, but messing up his knee is the top of her list). She grabs onto a new partner and keeps spinning through the dance floor.  
It’s Jughead who introduces her to Cheryl Blossom. She has a big time dance-a-thon coming up and it would be nice to have a big name on her arm.  
Cheryl is one of the few people who passed Toni’s test. She dances beautifully, obviously having some professional training, but she knows her more hip dances well enough.  
Toni is slightly impressed, and when Cheryl offers to take the two of them shopping for new flapper style dresses, she finds herself wanting to say yes.  
She also finds, she realizes later, that Cheryl was sizing her up just as much as she was back. In a way in was nice to be under her sharp scrutiny, a new thing to push her to dance harder.  
They win the dance-a-thon and then Cheryl takes Toni back to her speakeasy and the girl singing sounds wonderful. They’re both exhausted, and so they strip off their shoes and hold each other, swaying in each other’s arms more than actually dancing, even when the music picks back up in tempo.  
At one point Toni watches as Cheryl looks over her should and mouths something at Archie, the redhead always hanging around Jughead. Toni doesn’t catch it, but she can see Archie break out laughing over by the bar.  
They dance the rest of the night and then collapse into a booth as the speakeasy shuts down around them.  
Toni knows she has a club gig the next day, that she should have headed home hours ago, but looking at the way Cheryl’s headpiece has fallen down into her eyes she can’t quite bring herself to care.  
-  
At some point Toni starts singing back-up for Veronica on nights she’s not dancing. She also continues to drag Cheryl to dance-a-thons because they make an incredibly good team.  
-  
Cheryl and Toni get married at The Cherrybomb a few years after they meet. Jughead is Toni’s groomsman and Veronica and Betty are Cheryl’s bridesmaids. Archie walks Cheryl down the aisle. Kevin officiates and Reggie is the ring barer. It’s a small, private ceremony and they all spend a night off at Cheryl’s speakeasy boat (named the Red Lass). They drift down the river partying and pretending that this night will last forever. Toni dances with everyone at least once, Veronica half-drunkenly attempts to sing through all of Ave Maria, Archie picks Cheryl up and spins her every time they walk by each other, Jughead and Betty stick to the sides a bit more. Betty does tell Jughead about how she knew they were going to get married before anyone else because as bartender to the rich and wealthy she knows half the cities secrets. Archie does also make Cheryl promise to walk him down the aisle when the time comes, which gets a kick out of everyone.  
-  
Toni hates Hiram because he fucked with all her friends but more specially because he was responsible for Jughead getting made and therefore responsible for his knee injury. Toni hates Hiram because he stole her dance partner.  
-  
They eventually take Hiram Lodge down. Veronica gets enough money to live comfortably as Vee Luna and sing every night she wants, Archie gets the Andrews family’s wealth back, Jughead gets revenge for himself and his father, and Betty gets revenge for every time Hiram tried to swipe up the Cooper fortune.  
Veronica lured him into a trap, where then Cheryl came out and appeared. She explained everything Jughead, Betty, and Kevin had gathered on him over the past few years.  
Hiram only nodded and said those things are true, but that it still wasn’t enough to take him down.  
That’s when Archie appeared, gun in hand. The shot rang throughout the Lodge Estate and despite Archie’s usual need to keep his bruisings quiet, he didn’t care.  
When news of Hiram’s death hits the newspapers, half the city rejoices, but none more so than a small assembly of people of the Red Lass, sipping rum from Hiram Lodge’s personal cellar.

**Author's Note:**

> Fangs never Actually gets a driver’s license he just forged himself one  
> -  
> This was very self indulgent but I hope you enjoyed


End file.
